two generations. two voices. one blog.

A Scholarly Skirt

It’s a rather amusing fact, that although I spend most of my time in an academic setting (school), and hang out with academic people all the time, I don’t really care for academics. My own inner academic is a flighty and theoretical person, who gets very excited about picking out classes and purchasing textbooks, but vanishes completely at the first sign of an essay. I am a theater major (hurrah!) who finds history and literature very fascinating indeed, provided I never have to formulate a thesis sentence connected with them.

Be that as it may, this skirt definitely speaks to my secret English major.

It’s something about the color, or the corduroy, or the pleats, or the high waist. I don’t think the pattern itself is inherently collegiate-looking, but maybe the fabric is. Doesn’t it just look like I should be reading Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in the library on a rainy afternoon? Or walking across campus with a bookbag and a blazer with orange leaves falling around me? I could be in one of those college brochures, except no one would ever believe it. (OK, maybe it’s not that over-the-top, but wait until I get my hands on a sweater-vest.)

OK, but as for the actual skirt. They had a bunch of corduroy at JoAnn’s when I was there with my mother, and I wanted to make something I could wear with blouses. I debated navy or forest green, but settled on green because–forest green corduroy! How do you get any better than that?

I picked out Burda 7300 for my skirt pattern (look at me, using a pattern!), not understanding that the little arrow on the diagram means “cut on the bias.” It did initially bother me that all the little lines of corduroy were going to be doing whatever they jolly well pleased and not going up and down, but I got over it. I even bought a lining fabric! (Let’s be real, I spent a lot of money at JoAnn’s, but hey! I can line garments in forest green polyester for years to come! And the skirt is absolutely worth it.) I made view A with the view B waistband and without the tulle . . . or else I made view B shortened and with a lining. You decide.

I cut out all the pieces in a straight 10 as my measurements decreed, and didn’t have to alter anything, which was delightful. Of course I cut out one of the skirt pieces on the wrong side of the fabric since I didn’t pay enough attention to the instructions (the tale of woe is here). Luckily for me, I am about five inches shorter than the person the pattern was intended for, so my only real alteration was to chop an inch or so off the hem, which somehow magically fixed my wrong-side-of-the-fabric problem. I think it also messed up my bias-cut on one of the back pieces, but it’s not like I had enough fabric to cut a whole other skirt panel properly on grain, so I decided it was close enough. 30 degrees, 45 degrees, what’s the difference really, right? Ha.

I also french-seamed the entire thing, which was a poor decision on such bulky fabric with only 5/8th seam allowances. But I love french seams so much, and corduroy ravels super easily. When I did it on the waistband, the interfacing and the corduroy made really thick seams and it was too tight. I don’t like a lot of ease around my waist, but I do like to be able to eat and breathe and move comfortably, so I half-unpicked about four of the seams, trimmed the fabric, and sewed them up again with smaller seam allowances. This gave me plenty of room, in fact, I’m glad I didn’t do it with all of the seams as that would have been too much. In retrospect I suppose I should have bias-bound all my seam allowances instead, but hey. All’s well that ends well, as they say (they also say, platitudes are fun!).

I did bias-bind my center back seam, actually, though to be honest I didn’t know what I was doing and my bias tape was too wide, etc. etc. It’s hidden by the lining, though.

(Or maybe it’s my lighting that’s terrible . . .)

Please excuse the sloppiness of the zipper. I biked to Mill End to purchase bias tape, an invisible zipper, and a zipper foot, but they only had one zipper foot and when I came home I discovered that it didn’t actually fit my machine, so I had to sew the zipper in by hand. Luckily it was only nine inches. I usually find myself sewing in 20-inch zippers and that is never any fun at all.

Something about my hand-sewing abilities resulted in my invisible zipper being visible. Alas. But it’s the same color as my skirt so I can live with it.

Here’s the front of my lining.

It was super slippery and not fun to sew at all, especially since I couldn’t tell the right and wrong sides apart and kept doing all my french seams backwards and inside out. I was also supposed to hand sew the whole waistband lining in, but I got bored and very slowly machine-stitched about half of it instead. The fabric is some sort of cheap anti-static polyester which will hopefully keep it from clinging to my tights as skirts are wont to do. I have quite a lot of extra too, and four enormous pirate shirts sewn from lining fabric that I can cannibalize, so I think I can happily avoid buying lining fabric for the next sixty projects I do!

Anyway, I like this a lot, and I can see myself wearing it excessively when the weather gets colder. I have a pair of forest green suede Hush Puppies that will definitely come into use a lot more now that this skirt exists. I actually might have to make another version soon-ish, so I won’t wear this one to death, or else maybe make a rule about the number of wearings in a week. We’ll see. I certainly won’t be sewing with corduroy in August again anytime soon! The fact that school starts in a few weeks keeps tricking me into thinking I can start wearing fall clothes again soon (thank goodness, my wardrobe is not geared towards warm-weather dressing), but in fact there is still over a month of summer left! Good news for our upcoming outdoor theater piece, sad news for someone who wants to wear her new corduroy skirt.

Look, a pleat! Isn’t it pretty?

And some more just because this post isn’t long enough yet . . .

The hems were not miserable to sew, for once. This might mean I’m getting better at it.

In which I am pleased with my skirt (not so with my bags of paper and fabric scraps in the background, but I’m moving, so my room is chaotic).

OK, this post is definitely long enough to convey my enthusiasm for my new skirt. Now, I have to pack my entire room up by Saturday so I should go work on that, probably.

Cute skirt. Love the pleats. Really nice work with the lining and everything. It will look great with those Hush Puppies. And a ton of other things. I like Shannon’s idea about the patterned tights. Cute cute.